What's Life For? : The Peripheries of Capitalism

What’s our ultimate goal in life? To be gainfully employed, buy a nice home and car? And then what? To acquire all these things and incessantly worry about their maintenance and upkeep? Then maybe have offspring and begin to worry about our ability to support and provide for them as well? To live life restricted, fearful and primarily in pursuit of cash money? Whatever your answer, it definitely seems this way for all of us. We’re born into this world, stamped with a number that will forever define our fiscal significance, and it begins.

We’re institutionalized early and socialized into our school system. We begin to learn, but not for the love of wisdom and acquiring knowledge, but for our social respect for “education” itself and the likelihood it will take us to greater opportunity.  

Either a doctor, lawyer, teacher or mechanic, we distinguish career directions our talents or mental capacities will make feasible, and morph into a preexisting career as high on the social totem pole as we can go.

And then we continue to “exist” without “living” at all. We begin to fall into our empty repetitions, and endless game of worrying and balancing. There is no end and no being comfortable enough. More is always better and beseeched. There’s also a very blurred line between needs and wants. Exploring this gift of life to the fullest, enjoying time with friends and family, or spending time attempting to learn and grow spiritually are things we simply try to fit into our schedules. Mainly, we exhaust our time here fantasizing about being rich, remain stuck in fruitless routines, work all day for companies that don’t do anything for society, and desperately attempt to figure out more money earning possibilities to sustain ourselves and acquire more. Ironically, we do this amidst haunting notions of something more to life, and the after-life burning through our sub-conscience thought. There’s a pervasive feeling that this life is somehow misdirected or even wasted.

As we wallow in this capitalist existence, everything is set up for us to live blindly in our illusions. Governments allows banks, businesses, creditors, and mortgage companies to take advantage of us, almost ensuring a life of debt and entrapment. Most of us don’t actually own anything. It’s an oppressive form of inconspicuous, modern day slavery. From our houses and cars in our driveways, to the utilities we depend on, we continuously pay for them without finality. Houses are paid off through monthly mortgages pretty much for life. The cost of houses continue to rise and we keep adding to our own problems because of our incessant attempts to make more money. It’s become a popular trend to buy up property for the sole purpose of reselling it for more money. That’s a typical function of capitalism: screw the guy next to you. Eventually the system will collapse and squeeze the middle class away into few rich and many poor.

The lower you are on the totem pole, the more “the system” works against you. In fact, businesses run your credit to continue the downward spiral. If you make less or have bad credit, you don’t get loans, you get hit with higher interests, longer, harder and more expensive options, and you often have to pay more and/or upfront for most items and services. Doesn’t even make a smidgen of sense---no homophone pun intended. When you have less, you pay more with more obstacles to hurdle. When you have more, you have less obstacles and its smoother sailing. Who makes these rules? Who do these rules work for and what are they designed to do? Of course it doesn’t make any humane sense, but it successfully serves the purpose of keeping us afraid and keeps the game in play. We know something isn’t quite right but we sit there and let it be, as long as we make sure it’s not us down there. That’s another one of the funny things about our capitalistic system; it makes us so competitive and selfish we have no intentions of reform until it does hit the rest of us during recessions.

So what are the main consequences of the proverbial rat race? Well, most importantly it keeps us spiritually dead and distracted from real issues. It keeps people divided, unhappy and competing. There’s also a pervasive disinterest in politics, human rights, or saving the planet. Everyone’s too preoccupied with survival and materialism. Everyone, whether they realize it openly or not, is depressed. It’s even affected our art. Music that used to represent our consciousness and raw emotions now mostly feed our insatiable need of distraction. Most music created today is run by companies trying to make lots of money as well, keeping the content tap dancing for mass appeal. Most contemporary music is dead, corporate, predictable and stuck exploiting sex, drugs, partying, and flashing money….all while Rome is burning.

We don’t have a free society or a democracy either. We're tricked into thinking we do. The best slaves are slaves who don’t notice the chains. We’re slaves who adhere to the oppressive agenda of a veiled elite.

We don’t have freedom of press. Big business and advertisers run the media and influence its content. Rupert Murdoch, for example, owns Fox, The New York Post and a host of other media publications from the US to Australia. One man’s prerogative has become a reason why millions of people are inundated with opinion based news with laughable showmen and "commentaters" like Glen Beck at the forefront, posed as respectable journalists. News isn’t reported, news is edited, filtered down, and deliberated versions of it are spoon fed to the masses. Men in suits with national coverage can insinuate that Obama is an America hating Muslim. They can tell us we have a man in Saturn. They can pretty much tell us whatever they want as if we’re not entitled to responsible, unbiased, un-opinionated and factual news. They don’t operate in the name of good journalism, they’ve evolved into operating almost completely in the name of powerful special interests or entertainment and money earning ratings.

We don’t have freedom of speech. If your views are not influenced or in accordance with that of the powerful elite, you most likely will never get the proper platform or amplification. Another case in point, Ron Paul has run for president with very sound reasoning. He exposes problems with the current state of Government, including our dependence on the Federal Reserve. However, because he’s neither Democrat or Republican, and because the Reserve controls all of our money, he’ll never be given reasonable face time and he’s always drowned out. They don't deny him his right to run, they simply manuever the public into not taken him seriously by ignoring him and anyone else who doesn't fit into the mold. There’s obvious proof that millions of Americans were inspired by Ron Paul and his arguments. Regardless, controlled by their powerful parties, the other candidates never address the issues Ron Paul dragged to light, they never even mention his name.

The Altruist International website states, “ Mathematics replace morality in the sense that profitable activity thrives and all other activity is suppressed. Problems arise from activities which are financially productive but socially destructive. Love is fundamental to human welfare and yet, because it leads to activity such as sharing, caring and giving away, it runs counter to economic ‘progress’, so those activities which promote love are discouraged, while those which discourage it are promoted. Inadvertently perhaps, the capitalist system rewards selfishness but punishes altruism.” This is the framework in which society contiues to evolve.

Our dog eat dog, survival of the wealthiest, subservient to big business society is supposed to bottom out. It will continue to get worse until we finally realize in the aftermath of losing our values, spirituality, and happiness that the machine wins, and we lose. Our social worship of money and material possessions, in addition to our dependence on gas and chemicals that destroy our planet daily isn’t our individual decision, it’s what we allow to happen.

Recessions and Depressions aren’t just scary words we need to steer ourselves away from. They’re our eventual destination. It’s how the monopoly game ends. Imprudent administrations like the previous only push us closer to the inevitable. Smart leaders and strong administrations only buy us more time in our illusion and enable us to swim away from the spiraling drain.

I know I’m preaching to the choir in many circles and I’m not saying anything ground breaking. Many of us know this already. That’s what’s frustrating. We’ve become a ho-hum society that take beatings on the stool. Everyone sits and waits for the world to change, but change nothing about what they do individually. There are a number of things that are common knowledge, but our brainwashing is so deep that fear keeps us immobile. People who galvanize, speak out and try to do something are looked at as radicals and freaks.

So how do we fix this? The world won’t be changed overnight. However, we should never give up on what we know should be done no matter how implausible it is. We could begin by at least changing our attitudes. That would begin to effect society a lot more than we think. When we have children that wish to follow their hearts and do something not socially considered lucrative, we shouldn’t chastise them and poison them with the ideologies the world has pumped into us and contaminate their pure initiatives. Never forget that people trapped in careers they hate have murdered their spirit and are unreasonable, not people who follow their passion.

We could be more socially conscious and know what many of these businesses are doing. Take LA for example. I love LA. However, you have to know it’s a perfect example of how the oil and auto industries have held us back in time. It's one of the most popular cities in the world but there are no subways or alternatives means of travel. There’s always heavy traffic and everyone has to drive everywhere. Firstly, we should’ve already converted over to electric power, emancipating us from exorbitant gas prices and toxic carbon monoxide pollution long ago. Successful prototypes have already been made, but blocked from world wide distribution. The Auto and Oil industries are public enemies that keep us from having things that would change the world to keep us steady consumers. Their money, lobbyist and secret dealings ring louder and outmaneuver our needs.

There should be more cures or preventative attention for most diseases instead of innumerable medicines designed to help people live with the disease subservient to drugs. In the 20's, 30's and 40's, there were cures announced in the news all the time. Not anymore. Because of profit, the health industry has absolutely no interest in curing people. They want to keep us functionally ill so we can continue to purchase drugs. Most diseases are preventable. We should all educate ourselves on healthier living and try to be independent of prescription drugs. They don't want us healthy and independent, they want to sell us drugs for life.

As for education, I know it shouldn’t be something you spend decades paying off. Without scholarships, the lower class obviously wouldn’t be able to afford to send their children to college. Our social growth is stunted and we’re fixed against each other to compete. So as long as most of us can send our kids to school, we really don’t care if many people can’t.

Know your opposition. There are many people still hooked up to “the matrix”, so to speak. There are many people who work in and for these oppressive conglomerates and are genuinely fearful of change or shift in public opinion. Some consider people against capitalism gone berserk un-American. Even when pressured and made to feel ridiculous, never let your focus and resolve for what’s right break.

Lastly we need to calm the monster that’s been created in us and simplify. We've become greedy, simplistic and spiritually vacant. We don’t need 3 cars and 2 homes. We need to rediscover the fact that there’s more to life than chasing money and acquiring things. Financial comfort and security is great. However, we take things to another level. People are depressed, suicidal and going through various financial problems that they placed themselves into because of greed and not living within their means. One of my favorite quotes is from the movie “Fight Club”, “ Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need…” So true and so very well summated.

The time has already come for us to start living for bigger reasons beyond ourselves and our bank accounts. And some things don't have the luxury of time, there's an urgency for our actions and state of mind.